Review of Death Note (2017) by Mehdi B — 24 Aug 2017

Characters are poorly developed, never a time to breath between scenes, seems hasty to end.

The actors -with the exeption of LaKeith Stanfield who seemed to at least have tried to incarnate L (if not fan of the original, at least did his homework) and Dafoe who seemed to be enjoying himself,- are mostly lost in their range when they have some and are laughable at times.

In the long run the movie could have tried somthing, if they weren't using the original characters, their good points would have prevaled, at least made it passable.But it stucked with the original material and tried something new with it, failed masterfully.

Light is NOT lovable, L is NOT particullary smart nor collected, Watari's name is enough to kill him eventhough it goes against the rules and if not, L was stupid enough to let his "father" use his real name and not use any means to hide his face. Ryuk is a god who loves killing (doesn't make sense with any pov on Death Gods) Mia goes from Strong to stupid, to being the Kira you want, to in love, to stupid again (not character devellopement, just use or be used, nice!) light's father is basically useless (even if well portraied by Shea Whigham).

In the end, to the ones saying "it's aimed at teenagers so who cares" I say everyone should, the movie has no purpose, bad rythm, mostly passable acting (I'm being nice) you don't get where it wants to bring you. No real meaning... To summurise, it is a bad movie thinking audience don't deserve a real story and is probably too stupid to understand anything beyond what's shown. It's basically a teenage movie on Final destination's level, adapted from a thriller trying to make you think about the Justice system which was far better than taking you, the audience, for the dumb people we probably are (looking at what's working now).

Watch the anime, watch the japanese movies (not the best but at least trying) forget this movie. ANd it sucks because Death Note, if understood, is probably easier to adapt than eg All You Need is Kill (Edge of tomorrow) but still fails to be something worth watching even if you never read or saw the original.